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Linkage (or not)

Creams offering lighter skin may bring risks from the New York Times. When I was at the African grocery store, I saw skin lightening creams behind the counter and sighed. One Brooklyn user had her skin become so sensitive that just a touch would bruise it. Use of steroidal creams can also cause high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar and suppression of the body’s natural steroids.

And I never did like Anderson Cooper, but thrusting a microphone into debris to tape a kid’s suffering while others are trying to rescue her is just inhuman. Yeah, I guess I won’t link that one. Asshole.

There are odd moments, and meta-moments, emerging througout the media coverage of Haiti. The BBC ran a strange report the other night that seemed to insist on a meta-narrative of how the aid was too slow in getting to people even though the city is in ruins and the airport was blocked at the time. This seemed to take on the additional meaning, in the presence of their criticism, that somehow the BBC would fly to the rescue, light a fire under everyone, and set it all right. It’s revealing how institutions see these events as an opportunity to show what we’re supposed to assume is their ‘true’ essence—altruism and helping—when they spend the rest of the time undermining democracy in the name of business and sabotaging the truth. This is indeed grim stuff.
TOG

“helpme2_adopt (0 friends, send message) wrote: 3d 17h ago
Does anybody have any information that I could use to go about getting emergency funding to adopt a haitian child right now?!? I am interested in adopting, but would rather use my money to support a child than to pay to adopt the child. There are too many parentless and homeless children in Haiti as we speak, and I would love to help at least one of them. I am a mother of 3 already, and would like a toddler/infant to adopt. Please help me if you can suggest any sites, agencies, or companies that might be able to help. Thank you!”

Maybe it’s just me, but the link that Restructure provided really pissed me off with this statement by an AP:

“We were two or three weeks away from going there to get her,” Boston said Thursday. “We’re so afraid. We expect rioting to happen soon. What little food they have is in jeopardy. … We’re trying to appeal for help in getting these children special status.”

Maybe it was the “rioting to happen soon, or maybe it was the special status part, not sure which one wins.

@Kathy – you know whenever a catastrophe harms poor blacks in New Orleans or here the mythmaking about looting/rioting is about to start. The US has sent troops (!) and Cuba? is sending doctors…

Ethica “An Indepdent Voice for Ethical Child Adoption” is on top of things http://www.ethicanet.org/ethica-response-to-crisis-in-haiti “… we want to strongly emphasize that starting new adoptions, or participating in “babylifts”, are inappropriate tools to employ at this time. With the conditions on the ground in Haiti, it is nearly impossible to determine if a child has living parents or relatives, and it is a widely-accepted best practice of child welfare to attempt to reunite children with living relatives before seeking out-of-family placements…”